The Republican Party, infested as it currently is with extremists, reactionaries, and government-hating Tea Party kooks, has been, for several months, filling its clown car to the White House with wackos, much as it did in 2012. In this post, I resume the intermittent series which features the declared and / or desiring wannabe candidates who will be making a bid for the presidency in 2016. Today’s focus will be on the queen of the wannabes, that failed ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard who goes by the name of Carly Fiorina.

The voters of California did themselves a big favor in 2010 when they denied Carly Fiorina the Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer. For Fiorina proved herself to be wholly unsuitable for public office with her petty remarks about Sen. Boxer’s hair style and her destructive past business history. It was symptomatic of what one would expect from a former CEO who had once tasted power and became addicted to it, and who has contempt for all the so-called little people who inhabit the lower income classes beneath her. Yet what could one expect from such a person, who has known only privilege her entire life?

Fiorina likes to brag that she advanced up the ladder of the business world from a lowly secretary to eventually run a Fortune 50 company. What she fails to mention is that she was actually raised in an upper middle class family in Austin, TX. She was the daughter of a portrait and abstract artist named Madelon Montross, and a law school professor, dean, and later a federal judge, whose name was Joseph Tyree Sneed III. The young Ms. Sneed III attended Channing School in London (a posh, exclusive school for upper-class young women), as well as five different high schools, one of which was in Ghana. In 1076 she received a B.A. in Philosophy and Medieval History from Stanford University. She later received a Masters of Business Administration in Marketing from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, and a Bachelor of Science in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Pretty impressive credentials. So where did she go wrong from there?

Fiorina learned a lot about business in school, but, much like another person of privilege named Mitt Romney, she never bothered to learn about the very real day-to-day struggles of the poor and working poor, who, at 99%, vastly outnumber the privileged few 1% of her own social strata. Like millions of other business students, she was brainwashed into accepting the premise that the capitalist system was the best (and indeed the only) system for her to follow. So she began to follow and practice it at a furious pace. She poured herself into the corporate world, especially in the megalomania of climbing the corporate ladder to success. She began at AT & T in 1980 and climbed her way up to become an executive vice president. In 1999 computer-giant Hewlett-Packard named her to be CEO, showering her with a $3 million signing bonus, an annual salary of $1 million (as well as yearly bonuses of $1.25 – 3.75 million), plus a whopping $65 million in company stock! This was done to reward her for her having helped make HP the world’s largest personal computer manufacturer through a merger with rival company Compaq that she had pushed. Quite a feat, boy the downside was that this move shortly thereafter led to the horrible layoff of 39,000 of iys American workers! This created a nasty ripple effect throughout the tech industry, with HP stock losing more than HALF its market value and the related turbulence causing the NASDAQ index to fall by 26%! In earlt 2005, HP’s board of directors forced her to resign. Carly Fiorina may brag about once having been HP’s CEO, but many have described her as one of the worst tech CEOs of all time. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale business management scholar, has derided Fiorina for “destroying half the wealth of her investors and yet still (drawing) nearly $100 million in total payments for this destructive reign of terror.” It would seem that the numbers speak for themselves, wouldn’t it?

After her ouster at HP, Fiorina served on the boards of several different groups and also advised Sen. John McCain during his unsuccessful 2008 presidential run. She developed a taste for politics and decided to challenge Barbara Boxer in 2010 for her seat in the U.S. Senate. Having failed in that bid, she has now decided to run for President. Shortly before announcing, she FINALLY, after nearly five years, paid off campaign debts dating back to her failed 2010 Senate bid, This included unpaid salaries of her staff, who had been unpaid for nearly 5 full years and who would have remained that way, had she not opted to run for the presidency! It is no wonder that one of her ex-staffers was recently heard saying, “I’d rather go back to Iraq than work for Carly Fiorina again!” Is THIS the kind of person who deserves to become President? I certainly don’t think so!

While acknowledging that climate change is man-made and dangerous, Fiorina simply dismisses it by saying it would be “too expensive” fpr us to get off of carbon-based fossil fuels and that China and other countries will never get off of them either. What an unbelievably ignorant and short-sighted evasion of responsibility from one who cs to have the leadership skills to rule the most powerful nation in the world! This represents an apalling lack of critical thinking from one who holds the educational pedigree she has! This, to me at least, indicates much the same rash recklessness I have seen in recent years coming from other self-centered Republican wannabes ranging from Sarah Palin to Michele Bschmann to Rand Paul to Marco Rubio.

Also like many of her Republican counterparts, Fiorina apparently thinks little of the actual government she is attempting to head. At one point she set herself up as Chair and CEO of Carly Fiorina Enterprises, to bring “her unique perspective and experience to bear on the challenging issues of our world, championing economic growth and empowerment for a more prosperous and secure world.” Quite a lofty sentiment, except for the fact that she never bothered to register this bogus “foundation” to conduct business in California with either the clerk of Santa Clara County (where she lives) or with the California secretary of state, as required by law. This flagrant violation of the law, added to her failure to pay campaign workers until the very last minute, along with her past history of wantonly eliminating 30,000 American jobs makes me severely question this woman’s judgment and motives. While I am more than ready for the first woman President, I most certainly do NOT want that President to be Carly Fiorina!

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About jackjodell53

I am an American Dissident trapped in a country where poor and middle class people are constantly being exploited and lied to by a very rigid and conservative plutocratic elite. I believe in government OF, FOR, and BY the people, not one controlled as it now is by corporations and special interests.

Thanks, Invisible Mikey. Unfortunately, that happens on occasion, as I am legally blind due to nearly 60 tears with type I diabetes. Sorry if it offends you in any way. I just try to do the best I can…